


Mother of Dragons

by Demmora



Category: Discworld, Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dragons, F/M, Somewhere between Men at Arms and Feet of Clay, The Watch - Freeform, honorable mention: Captain Carrot. Constable Angua. Sgt Fred Colon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spring is in the air, birds are singing, the sun is shining, and dragons are exploding. It's all go at Ramkin Manor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother of Dragons

Commander Sir Samuel Vimes was on his day off. Which was to say he was currently doing work from home, and waiting on the inevitable call from the Yard which always seemed to come when life handed him nothing more complicated to handle than another coffee with the morning post.

It was a glorious spring day in Ankh-Morpork, the kind of day where the sun is deceptively bright, the skylarks are singing, and the dragons were in heat. Technically dragons were always in heat, it was— as it were—fundamental to their physiological structure. But there was only ever that special time once of year, where a lady dragon and a boy dragon (though one should never judge) might size the other up and decide to risk the maneuvers that went in to the act of what could quite literally be, explosive love mating.

Vimes had heard the expression “survival of the fittest”, but as he sat reading at the breakfast table, listening to the mating call of what could only be described as a dented water boiler heating up—punctuated by the occasional hiccupping implosion— he thought it ought to be “survival of the luckiest and/or the stupidly brave.”

It didn’t quite roll off the tongue as well, but it was more accurate at least.

This being dragons of course, it wasn’t as simple as trying to keep the pen doors closed and reminding yourself not to light a match before the air had cleared. No, this was _dragons_ , and that meant that Mother Nature had done everything in her power to make life as complicated for the poor buggers as possible.

The eggs were ready to hatch. Eggs which had been so carefully nested and kept warm for the last eleven months, and so possessively protected you didn’t dare reach into the pens with anything shorter than a ten foot pole with a lump of coal on the end…and now in the frenzy to create more eggs, they were being trampled.

“It’s their instincts you see,” Sybil had told him, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief covered in soot. “They only have enough room in their heads for one at a time, and the need to create more eggs outweighs the other. It’s all about continuing the bloodline.”

Vimes hadn’t said anything, not because he couldn’t think of what to say but because he could think of _exactly_ what to say and it was not something Sybil would ever want to hear. So instead he’d patted her arm and taken the broken mess from her cradled arm and…well, what did you do with a thing like that? Which was how he’d come to learn the secret from Willikins of just how the rose bushes were quite so hardy and flowered longer than any other rose Vimes had ever known.

 _Poor little buggers_ , he’d thought, and promptly pricked his finger on a thorn.

Still all hope was not yet lost, so far this morning, very early this morning in fact (there is nothing quite like an amorous dragon outside your bedroom window to wake you up at four in the morning) Sybil had counted no less than five new wyrmlings, all as happy and healthy as a swamp dragon can ever hope to be. Which isn’t saying much, but it was something. He’d peered in around the door, sometime around dawn and found her stooped over the nearest pen, one of the many interchangeable Emmas waiting patiently with what Vimes could only think of as ‘the iron cradle’. Both women, fully armored and armed with what passed for swamp dragon corralling gear, had waved at him with their giant oven mitts.

“Should have another five by lunch!” Sybil had called out cheerfully, and Vimes had smiled, nodded and made a hasty retreat before anyone could try and hand him anything hotter than a cup of coffee.

The sun was well and truly up now, and Vimes was fighting the lifetime habit born of being a night watchman for most of his life. Namely to crawl back to bed until it was dark again. It had been several months now since he’d walked the last true midnight beat, but old habits died hard. In fact they went kicking and screaming all the way, and it was taking very real effort not to sit back in his comfortable chair and doze.

“More coffee, Sir?”

Outside in the pens, something squalled loudly and a lick of flame shot past the window.

“Yes, Willikins,” Vimes replied, shunting his cup to the side and picking up the letter he was supposed to be reading, and started over. Reports seemed to be his life these days, reports, signatures, letters and requests for new equipment which Vetinari tried to stare him down for, eventually acquiescing when all Vimes could do was shrug. It certainly wasn’t _his_ fault the Watch was doing so well, or that people were actually _volunteering._ He felt vaguely certain it was Captain Carrot’s fault but could never quite pin down the how or the why. Carrot was like that, the boy was as transparent and smooth as glass, but people tended to forget that also made him slippery and sharp too. Still, he and Constable Angua seemed to be… _getting along_. A little healthy distraction from the diligence of duty might prove good for him, hopefully…eventually…. It’d certainly make Vimes’ in-tray lighter.

“Coffee, Sir.” Willikins prompted him, after several moments had gone by and Vimes realized he’d been holding the full cup poised, forgotten as he stared accusingly at the letter in hand, lips moving over some of the more—what Fred Colon would think of— _nobbily_ words.

“Tell me, Willikins,” he began, taking a sip from the coffee and scalding his tongue with a wince, “are we at home to the Carmilleas family?”

Willikins, having moved back to his corner by the serving station, inclined his head, “Indeed we are, Sir.”

“Well we’re not anymore,” Vimes growled, picking up his pencil scrawling a reminder to himself to post more guards up by Mithering Heights. _Shabby uniforms indeed._ The last Vimes had checked they were only slightly dented these days.

“Very good, Sir. I shall inform her Ladyship in due course.”

Vimes simply grunted, still glowering at the letter. “Carmilleas…pah. Which ones are they then?”

“If memory serves, Sir, they were here last month, for the charity auction of the ruby dragon brooch.”

Vimes drew a blank. Willikins filled it in.

“That you did not attend, Sir, owed to, I believe, “chasing that bastard Fitz ‘throat-slitter’ Smith, Sir. You arrived home covered in blood, Sir.”

Vimes brightened. “Oh, _that_ little gathering. Ha, yes I did wonder…Carmilleas, Carmilleas, was he the one that fainted or the one who just threw up down his front?”

“I believe he was the one sitting frozen in terror, Sir.” Willikins replied, and to his credit with only a smattering of reproach in his voice.

Vimes smiled. It wasn’t a particularly friendly smile, but it was a smile all the same.

Any further inquiry about how the auction had actually gone was interrupted however by the sudden absence of noise. It was subtle at first, and had probably been going on for quite some time until the lizard part of his brain which had evolved learning to smell the tiger before it could be seen, connected with the simian part, and Vimes registered the hair rising on the back of his neck.

Both Vimes and Willikins looked at each other, and then ducked.

The world exploded in a shower of glass and hot flame, tinkling down around them in the previously so solid seeming world of the oak and mahogany furnished breakfast room. Bits of what had probably once been a dragon, soon followed.

“I say!” shouted an autocratic and above all else, _concerned_ voice, “I say, everyone all right up there?”

Vimes crawled out from under the table, coffee mug still in hand, if a little sloshed, and surveyed the damage. The curtains, what remained of them at least, were on fire, and some of the woodwork around the window was a little scorched, but other than that things seemed to be fine. He stepped carefully over the glass, trying hard not to differentiate between shards and scales lest his breakfast decide to make an impromptu resurgence. He pulled the curtains down, with some aid from Willikins, and stamped out the remnant flames, then leant out the gaping maw where the window had once been, the brickwork of the house hissing and plinking as the stone resettled into new warped shapes, turning from white hot to simply molten red.

“Bit crispy, Sybil.” Vimes announced, waving his hand to clear some of the smoke without much effect, “Everything fine with you?”

“Bloody bothersome!” his wife replied, and now that he could see her Vimes could make out that her suit was blackened and her wig was missing, but otherwise she seemed all right. “Silly gel tried to defend her nest from Lady Wimple, as though Lady Wimple would try to steal her egg.”

“What exactly happened, dear?” Vimes asked, absently taking a swig from his coffee and ignoring when Willikins exited the room, no doubt in search of a brush and dustpan and possibly a glazier.

“The Duchess of Quirm.” Sybil replied, as though Vimes ought to know a dragon by the bits if left smoking behind. “It was her final nesting, they start to go a bit funny when they get too old, especially if they only lay the one egg. Well, Lady Wimple, you know, the rainbow scales Sam,” Sybil explained patiently when Vimes’ expression remained blank, “well Lady Wimple got too close to her side of the nesting pen. Well I _tried_ to separate them and she took off with her egg and…”

“And boom.” Vimes finished.

“And boom.” Sybil replied, her irritation finally deflating into sadness. “Poor Duchess…the silly goose cooked her own egg too. It’s the end of her breeding line.”

“Are you all right, dear?” Vimes asked.

“Oh yes fine,” Sybil waved a mitt at him, “don’t mind me Sam dear, just…silly…” she sniffed, and Vimes sighed inwardly. “I really should calm the rest of them down, always so frightful for them when this happens.”

“Yes, Sybil.” Vimes agreed, then added because he knew in a million years she’d never ask, “I’ll just come down shall I?”

It was ridiculous, how her smile could make the sun seem brighter. He’d always thought poetry was a bunch of lark made up by attic dwellers who partook of the creative fumes too much and not enough fresh air, but all evidence to the contrary was staring up at him now, smiling in the gentle way that she had which made Sam Vimes ache to be a better man. The one she thought she had married.

“You really don’t have to…”

Vimes waved his hand, “Down in a minute, I’m sure Willikins can see to up here.”

Setting his mug down on the glass scattered table, Vimes began moving towards the door, when something caught his attention. There on the table, nested between the ruined breakfast foods, was an egg. There was nothing unusual about it per-se, it was large for an egg, possibly produced by a robust and fearless chicken, but otherwise ordinary. Were it not glowing red hot and burning a hole through the table.

“Um,” he said, and watched as the shell began to smoke, then disintegrated in a cloud of ash.

When Vimes reappeared from crouching behind the table, it was to find the world’s smallest dragon, peering back at him at eye height.

Swamp dragons were small true enough, but all the wyrmlings he’d seen before now had been bigger than the length of his palm. This one could have fit easily with room to spare, its snout barely larger than the length of his thumb, head far too big for its body, framed by large, soulful eyes.

The world’s tiniest flamethrower, hiccuped.

When he was certain he still had both eyebrows, Vimes stood up and reached out to the dragon. It made a faint little crooning sound, and brushed its scaly nose against his fingertip. It was so cold it burned. That wasn’t right, was it?

Faint recollection turned on in Vimes’ head, and he remembered what Sybil had told him about the need for the iron cradle. Wyrmlings were hopeless at retaining body heat, and their parents were so absent mindedly stupid or prone to exploding that finding an alternate source of heat until their body temperature regulated was vital to survival.

The dragon squeaked at him, and while Vimes was pretty certain nothing that breathed fire ought to evolutionarily be so adorable, he was also certain that he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t get this one to Sybil as quickly as possible.

“Come on then, my little spitfire.” Vimes said, looking for something to pick it up in and finding his mug. It was still warm, he noted, tipping the coffee out onto the already ruined floor and using the serving tongs to lightly lift the peeping scaly creature. The metal was burning cold by the time he was able to let go, the wyrmling settling down into the bottom of the mug, clinging to the last dregs of heat.

“Let’s find the mother of dragons, shall we?” he asked, feeling a bit like an idiot, but an idiot with a purpose as he strode out of the breakfast room, past Willikins and out into back of the house where chaos still reigned, but an organized kind of chaos, the kind that could only flourish under careful nurturing and a good pair of fireproof gloves. “She’s good at taking care of people.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written to celebrate reaching 500 followers on tumblr :0) please forgive any typos, my beta reader exists in another time zone!


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